i themselves, should be safeguarded by making it a free
city under international control.

No account of the extraordinary drama--farce would be a better name were
its possibilities not so tragic--which is being staged at Fiume would be
complete without some mention of the romantic figure who is playing the
part of hero or villain, according to whether your sympathies are with
the Italians or the Jugoslavs. There is nothing romantic, mind you, in
Gabriele d'Annunzio's personal appearance. On the contrary, he is one of
the most unimpressive-looking men I have ever seen. He is short of
stature--not over five feet five, I should guess--and even his
beautifully cut clothes, which fit so faultlessly about the waist and
hips as to suggest the use of stays, but partially camouflage the
corpulency of middle age. His head looks like a new-laid egg which has
been highly varnished; his pointed beard is clipped in a fashion which
reminded me of the bronze satyrs in the Naples museum; a monocle, worn
without a cord, conceals his dead eye, which he lost in battle. His walk
is a combination of a mince and a swagger; his movements are those of
an actor who knows that the spotlight is upon him.

Though d'Annunzio takes high rank among the modern poets, many of his
admirers holding him to be the greatest one alive, he is a far greater
orator. His diction is perfect, his wealth of imagery exhaustless; I
have seen him sway a vast audience as a wheat-field is swayed by the
wind. His life he values not at all; the four rows of ribbons which on
the breast of his uniform make a splotch of color were not won by his
verses. Though well past the half-century mark, he has participated in a
score of aerial combats, occupying the observer's seat in his fighting
Sva and operating the machine-gun. But perhaps the most brilliant of his
military exploits was a bloodless one, when he flew over Vienna and
bombed that city with proclamations, written by himself, pointing out to
the Viennese the futility of further resistance. His popularity among
all classes is amazing; his word is law to the great organization known
as the _Combatenti_, composed of the 5,000,000 men who fought in the
Italian armies. He is a jingo of the jingoes, his plans for Italian
expansion reaching far beyond the annexation of Fiume or even all of
Dalmatia, for he has said again and again that he dreams of that day
when Italy will have extended her rule over all that territory which